The plot: After the death of their son, parents Jessie (Kate
Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane) adopt Cody (Jacob Tremblay). They soon discover that whenever Cody goes to sleep, his dreams manifest themselves
in the real world. As both Jessie and Mark take comfort in what Cody’s gift can
do, it soon becomes clear that not everything in his dreams is benevolent and his nightmares could prove something far more dangerous for his new parents.
Bosworth as the mother continues to show Flanagan and
Howard’s refreshing approach to female character writing, giving her very
definable faults (and potentially disastrous ones at that), but by film’s end,
she shows a sense of strength and compassion that is as startling as it is
heart-squeezing. Jane as the father is made of cool, having remarkably warm
chemistry with Tremblay and really getting across that he is a man who cares
about children. Also, “gamer dad” is an archetype that I want to see more of,
especially if it’s done as well as this. Tremblay, much like his breakout role
in Room, is playing a child meant to show how a child’s mind comprehends
emotionally complex situations, and he is still amazingly capable in that
capacity. The way he shows understanding of what he is capable of doing, both
good and bad, is far beyond his years but not without losing that innocent
viewpoint.
Annabeth Gish does well as the Hobsons’ caseworker, Dash Mihok gets
some frightfully memorable moments to show how Cody’s powers can affect those
around him, and Topher Bousquet as the Canker Man, the creature of Cody’s
nightmares, both looks and feels like precisely that.
The idea of dreams becoming a frightening reality have
become rather commonplace in the realms of horror, especially in the wake of A
Nightmare On Elm Street and its numerous copycats. However, rather going for
full reality-warping high concept depictions, the way Cody’s dreams manifest
here are actually a lot simpler than that. The use of butterflies, along with
serving as a rather interesting visual metaphor for what is truly going on,
also give the waking world of Cody’s dreams this eerie tranquillity. It’s
basically the rather unnerving idea of where the dream world and the real world
collide as filtered through a child’s sense of wonder, and when it starts out,
the visuals absolutely nail that concept.
But as they grow more monstrous, the
film ends up using that same simplistic approach to the ends of horror,
something else that is done quite well. The Canker Man, both in design and in
action, presents itself first through a warping of the same wondrous imagery
and then as a monster that consumes all that it touches. Again, while its
design and methods end up playing more into the psychological parts of the
story, the concept combined with Flanagan’s trademark use of blurred vision so
that we can see it but not all of it
makes for some very unsettling set pieces.
But if I’m being honest, this isn’t really a horror film…
not in its entirety, at least. It’s a horror film in the same way as Terry
Gilliam’s Tideland or even this year’s A Monster Calls: The tragedies of life
as filtered through the understanding of a child. For as much as innocence and
purity have been attached to child characters in fiction for about as long as
children themselves have existed on this earth, that same mindset also leads to
rather dark ideas. When a child’s understanding of the world is inherently
stunted due to lack of prolonged exposure to it, the way they try and reconcile
what is going on around them often leads to the fantastical, the irrational, or
both.
When combined with how Jessie and Mark deal with the loss of their own
son, the film becomes a tale about how people deal with grief and loss, a
common trend in Mike Flanagan’s work, and how those feelings manifest
themselves. Sometimes it’s an unhealthy need to relive what has already past
rather than overcoming it, sometimes it’s sheer denial of the event rather than
even approaching it to try and overcome it, and sometimes it merges with one’s
own viewpoint of the world that ends up shifting one’s understanding of it.
The other reason why I hesitate in calling this a horror
film is that the truly horrific elements only start up at around the hour mark.
Before it, the film mainly exists in this dreamscape painted by Cody that is
used less for scares and more for pathos and character development. Then the
final reel kicks in and this starts to feel all too familiar, and not in the
best of ways. With scary children being a rather long-living staple of classic
horror, there is a rather strict formula surrounding them in fiction,
particular with them as main characters. Once the terror officially kicks in,
this film starts to follow that same road, right down to the parent who
investigates the child’s dark past to try and discover why these things are
happening.
The pacing takes a bit of a beating at this point too, almost as if
Flanagan himself realised that he spent a little too much time focusing on the
innocence and, when it came time for horror, he squeezed most of it into the
final reel. Not to say that the horror is bad, as it definitely brings some
chills, or that the ending isn’t satisfying in both its intent and ultimate
execution; it’s just the half-hour preceding it could have been a lot smoother.
All in all, while honestly a bit weaker in terms of
balancing family drama and supernatural horror than Flanagan’s other works,
there’s still a lot to like about this. The acting is solid, the visuals keep
simple to great effect, and while the story progression can go a bit
off-the-rails near the end, the writing still highlights that need for the
fantastical to come to terms with things that all too real and scary. It may be
one of the weaker instances in Mike Flanagan’s oeuvre, but looking at the
individual pieces and how they end up coming together, it still feels true to
it and succeeds because of that same understanding of how people react to the
darkness.
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